Teams | Collaboration | Customer Service | Project Management

The work we produce gets all the attention. But the real question is: what’s happening behind the scenes that makes that work possible? In this episode of The Handbook, Harv sits down with creative operations expert Nicky Russell, co-founder of WDC, We Deliver Change, and chair of the Creative Operations Summit in London. Together they explore the discipline of creative ops – the systems, culture, and leadership required to help creative teams do their best work.

As AI tools get more powerful, a fair question keeps coming up –– If AI can connect everything, do you still need a PSA? With AI agents, MCP, and a bit of low-code creativity, it can feel like you could stitch together your own operating stack. That assumption misses an important distinction –– AI is an accelerator. It’s not infrastructure. For professional services businesses, reliability, structure, and trust come from having a clear system of record underneath it all. That’s what makes automation sustainable, reporting credible, and decisions defensible.

AI is quickly becoming the control center for operations teams. MCP is the next step – letting AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude, securely connect to your systems and actually take action, not just respond to prompts. But there’s a catch. AI doesn’t fix messy operations. If your information is scattered across tools, spreadsheets, and workarounds, AI just amplifies the mess. The real value shows up when there’s a clear system of record underneath it all.

Ops Quickies – we're back with another snackable episode. This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered: Is my business actually set up to scale – or are we just surviving? Harv breaks down: Why business maturity matters What it really means (hint: it’s not about headcount or revenue) Why most service businesses get stuck at the early stages And how you can quickly benchmark where you stand today...

When businesses talk about “productizing,” they often picture cookie-cutter scopes and rigid templates. But according to Brian Kessman, that’s missing the point. Brian is the founder of Lodestar Consulting, and he’s spent 25 years helping agencies and consultancies scale without burning out teams or eroding margins. His approach isn’t about productizing services – it’s about productizing value. In this episode of The Handbook: The Operations Podcast, Brian and Harv dig into what that really means, and how it can transform both your client relationships and your bottom line.

From the outside, M&A can seem like a clean transaction – a new parent company, a logo change, a cheerful announcement. But inside? The reality is messier. Integration. Culture clashes. Reporting headaches. And a long list of decisions that determine whether the deal actually works. Dom Hawes has lived both sides. After his own agency was acquired (badly), he went on to build Selbey Anderson – a marketing services group backed by private equity, designed from day one to scale through M&A.

New series alert: Ops Quickies — snackable episodes on tech, tools, and systems. We're kicking off with a big question wrapped in The Clunkiest Acronym: what the heck is a PSA... or professional services automation platform? Harv explains why the name’s a problem, what this kind of platform actually does, and why service businesses need to start paying attention. If you've got any questions about ops tech, PSAs, or Scoro, drop me a message on LinkedIn. I'd love to hear from you – and might even turn it into a mini episode.

In Scoro, there are three ways to create a project plan tailored to your needs. Join us in this video as we guide you through these three options, empowering you to streamline project planning in Scoro. Option 1: Convert quoted services into tasks. Easily transform your quote into a project and start tracking time against the outlined services. Option 2: Create a detailed project plan. Utilize the Gantt chart to break high-level deliverables into smaller tasks.

Your ops might be ticking along just fine. But what if your founder got sick tomorrow? What if your top client left? What if you had to make a big decision with zero visibility on the numbers? You might not be planning to sell your agency – but you should run it like you are. Because when you adopt that mindset, you zoom out. You stop firefighting. You start building a business that runs without you.

Scoro’s real-time team performance report gathers different data points related to team members into a single view to help you easily compare them and assess how efficiently each team member’s time is being used. It can help you: Understand each person’s actual availability after factoring in time off See how each team member’s hours are booked, planned, and logged for client work Compare how the tracked hours align with the team and company-wide targets Identify issues like over-booking and over-servicing Optimize resource allocation and profitability, and many other ways.